


Although You Can't See It

by JoyAndOtherStories



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands Week 2019, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, Shipper on Deck, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, present day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 09:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20526128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyAndOtherStories/pseuds/JoyAndOtherStories
Summary: The Ineffable Husbands ship still needs a bit of help to set sail (don't worry; it gets it). A fluffy outsider’s POV marriage proposal fic. Written for the Ineffable Husbands Week prompt "Senses."





	1. Before the End

**Author's Note:**

> Emma is all of us: Shippers, fanfic readers, fanfic writers.
> 
> Written for the Ineffable Husbands Week "Senses" prompt even though the whole point is that Emma DOESN'T sense anything out of the ordinary.
> 
> If anyone catches the Mary Poppins reference in the title, I'll be impressed, and we should probably be friends.

Emma found the bookshop by accident, thanks to the rain.

She wasn’t mystically drawn to it, nor did she feel a sense of unexplained power or history, nor did she perceive a dramatic aura surrounding the building or the owner (Mr. A. Z. Fell, according to the sign). In fact, over the course of her nineteen years of life to date, Emma had never been mystically drawn to anything, nor had she ever felt unexplained power or history, nor had she ever perceived any sort of aura—dramatic or otherwise—surrounding anything. Presumably this was because Emma was a fairly ordinary person, neither gifted nor cursed with extra senses, extra nipples, or a tendency to call her cat funny names (although technically this could not be verified, as she did not have a cat).

In any case, when the rain began, abruptly and drenchingly, on a spring day in Soho when she’d left the house much earlier than needed (thereby escaping a stream of criticism from her aunt), she simply ducked into the nearest available door, and the only feelings she experienced were mild annoyance at the moldy smell, and, later, mild trepidation at the owner’s possessive hovering when she picked up a dusty book. It wasn’t the kind of book she was interested in anyway, so she put it down and wandered around a corner. He continued to hover, though, some feet away from her and much too obviously pretending not to be watching her from the corner of his eye. He didn’t look assertive enough to do much more than hover—he was a sort of soft and round and anxious-looking person—but it eventually began to wear on her nerves.

“I’m not going to steal anything, you know,” she finally said. (Though lacking any sort of extrasensory abilities, Emma was gifted—or cursed, depending on the day—with a certain level of impulsivity, as well as a romantic imagination, which will be important later).

Mr. Fell’s eyes grew round in shock. “Of course not, my dear!”

Emma rolled her own eyes. “You don’t have to follow me around, then.”

“Oh!” He fidgeted. “It’s just—well. Some of the books are first editions, and I’d rather nobody touched them—well, at all, really.”

She crossed her arms. “I was only looking at them to be polite. I just came in here to get out of the rain.”

She meant it to be insulting, but Mr. Fell smiled with relief. “Oh, that’s wonderful, my dear.” He had an almost ludicrously kind smile. “And it’s very nice of you to be polite in that way, but it’s certainly _not _necessary. Please, have a seat.”—Emma found herself guided with surprising force to a chair with faded upholstery—“How about some lovely cocoa?”

A few moments later, not entirely sure how it had happened, Emma found herself sipping cocoa (from a mug with angel wings for a handle) in the faded chair while the rain poured down outside and Mr. Fell—who looked a bit like a plush, somewhat faded chair himself—pottered off behind several towering stacks of books.

This peaceable state lasted for approximately seven seconds.

The door opened with a crash to admit a tall, unreasonably thin man wearing a good deal of black, who certainly didn’t belong in an old, dusty bookshop.

“Sorry, angel!” he yelled toward the depths of the shop, raking a hand through dripping red hair, making it stand on end while scattering water droplets everywhere.

“Crowley!” exclaimed Mr. Fell, re-emerging. “What are you doing here? For Heaven’s sake, stop _dripping_!”

“_Stop dripping_,” the tall man mimicked. “What do you expect me to do, evaporate? It’s pouring down rain, and the bloody traffic’s backed up everywhere—just thought I’d come in to wait it out.” He whipped off a pair of sunglasses to dry them, revealing a pair of impossible eyes—

“_Crow_ley,” Mr. Fell muttered, jerking his head in Emma’s direction.

Mr. Crowley looked at her, frowned, and replaced the sunglasses. “You have a _customer_?” he asked Mr. Fell, skeptically.

“No, in fact,” Mr. Fell said, beaming reassuringly at Emma. “She only came in to get out of the rain.”

“And you’re giving her cocoa?” Mr. Crowley’s eyebrows arched up over his sunglasses. “Seems against your usual policy.”

“It’s pouring down rain!” Mr. Fell said defensively, rather (not that Emma knew this) as he’d once fretted over a young couple wandering off into a desert (which was also young at the time). “It’s cold out there. And she’s had a trying day.” This was true, although it hadn’t necessarily been more trying than usual. Emma hadn’t thought it showed.

Mr. Crowley, watching Mr. Fell, seemed to have lost track of the conversation—then, like he’d rebooted, tilted his head the opposite direction—“She’s going to get bored, is what’s going to happen,” he said, surveying her (presumably. Thanks to the glasses, he could have been surveying anything in her general vicinity). “Teenagers get bored.” He paused, frowning. “Is it teenagers who get bored? Anyway. The rain’s not going anywhere for an hour.”

“Crowley,” said Mr. Fell yet again, innocent blue eyes narrowing suspiciously. If Emma had been sensitive to anything beyond the ordinary plane of existence, which, as has been pointed out, she was not, she might have sensed memories floating around from decades and centuries before—accusations like _“So all of this is your demonic work?” _and _“Of course. These people are working for you!”_

“It’s nothing to do with me,” Mr. Crowley said, raising his hands. “All _I _did was point out that the traffic patterns get two hundred and twelve percent worse when it rains, and someone ran with it.” Emma, remaining firmly rooted in our usual human plane of existence, concluded that Mr. Crowley was employed in city planning (which, in fact, was one of the more accurate conclusions a stranger had drawn about Crowley in some time). “Erungghh—what were we talking about?” Mr. Crowley added.

Mr. Fell closed his eyes, delicately pinching the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t the faintest—”

“Boredom!” Mr. Crowley exclaimed, snapping his fingers. Emma jumped. Mr. Crowley turned toward her. “You might like those.” He pointed just past Emma, where there was a small stack of battered but otherwise very ordinary-looking books that she hadn’t seen before.

“Crowley!” Mr. Fell sounded scandalized. Emma took the top book off the stack and thought she knew why; the cover illustration was something her aunt would never have allowed in the house.

“Oh, shut it,” Mr. Crowley scoffed. “You collected more interesting things than that from the bloody _Victorian _era.”

“But they’re _paperbacks_,” Mr. Fell complained.

“That’s just so you won’t mind her touching them,” Mr. Crowley said. “I’ll go in the back, be out of your way.” He was already moving that direction, with a disconcertingly sinuous walk. “Got any wine?”

“Well, of course I—but you can’t just…Oh, very well,” Mr. Fell sighed. “But I’m saving the”—he named a wine that was entirely incomprehensible to Emma—“so don’t open that.”

“Whatever you say, angel,” came from somewhere deeper in the store.

After an hour of reading (the book was a romance of a type that Emma’s aunt would never have permitted her to read, with details that made her blush…but did not make her choose to stop), the rain did indeed let up. Traffic slowly returned to normal, though with an extra residue of ill will in its wake, and Emma made her way on to her job (feel free to fill in the exceptionally dull job of your choice here, as the details of Emma’s employment are not relevant to the story). It was the sort of job that only let her work for a few hours each day, on a schedule that changed at least once a week. This would have left an unpleasant number of hours available for auntly criticism had she spent them at home. Her aunt, though not the type of relative to kick her out to fend for herself, _was _the type to make increasingly annoyed noises about Emma’s need for full-time employment any time Emma was at home during what she considered normal work hours.

Mr. Fell’s bookshop hours were at least as irregular as her work hours, but Emma began making it a habit to walk past the shop when she made her escape from the house. Most places expected her to spend money, on coffee at the least, in order to spend her enforced free time there. Mr. Fell, by contrast, did his best to actively prevent people from spending money in his store. So she slipped in whenever she caught it open, found the stash of romances wherever either Mr. Crowley or Mr. Fell had shifted it, and sat herself somewhere out of the way.

Mr. Crowley, when he was there, did rather the opposite, passing most of his time perched on pieces of furniture not meant for that, looking at his mobile. Well, _holding _his mobile—Emma was fairly sure his eyes generally stayed on Mr. Fell. Emma got a good bit less reading done when he was there, partly because watching him bait Mr. Fell was more entertaining than the most scandalous romance novel, but also because he tended to whisk Mr. Fell away for lunch dates. This was sweet, but unfortunate for Emma, since it resulted in the shop being closed for the afternoon.

The first time she had a chance to observe them together was on her third visit, when Mr. Fell had received a shipment from a church clearing out old inventory. He was looking increasingly pained as he sorted through piles of literature that looked, even to Emma, cloyingly sentimental. Mr. Crowley, grinning, had scooped up a highly-illustrated _New Testament and Psalms_, the cover done in aggressively pastel flowers, and was delivering a running commentary that Mr. Fell was determinedly ignoring.

“That’s not what a harp looked like. That’s not even what a harp looks like _now_.”

“If you’re going to illustrate the Psalms, you could at least include the bit with the naked dancing.” He gestured broadly in a way that did not remotely suggest naked dancing.

“Ah, here we are.” (He’d reached the New Testament.) “Eh. The Son of God looks a bit…blonde.”

He flipped on to a page that Emma could see was an illustration of the Crucifixion. “Well, that’s…sterile. That’s practically…ineffable.”

Mr. Fell’s eyes flew to him, the pained expression replaced by…actual pain. “Don’t.” Something passed between them that Emma didn’t understand, given that she couldn’t see the shimmering memory of a blonde-haired man and a red-haired woman, mirroring each other’s grief at Golgotha.

“Well…” said Mr. Crowley, gesturing vaguely.

“Besides,” Mr. Fell resumed his usual manner, perhaps with a bit more spite than usual, “don’t you usually look for the temptation in the desert first?”

“Good point!” Mr. Crowley flipped pages disorganizedly. “Ohhh,” he said, holding the book away from him as if it had sprouted mold. “Well, that’s just insulting.”

Mr. Fell’s round, gentle face was remarkably sardonic. “So much for devilish good looks.”

For whatever reason, Mr. Crowley had to open and close his mouth at least three times to get his vocal cords back in working order.

“Oh, I know,” he muttered eventually, flipping pages again. “The Annunciation! Let’s see our friend Gabriel.”

“No, don’t—”

“Ha!” Mr. Crowley shouted, having found what he was looking for. “Good old Gabe would love that,” he scoffed, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Actually, I think he _would_.”

“Stop it!” snapped Mr. Fell, his eyes darting nervously upward. Mr. Crowley held out the page with a raised eyebrow. Mr. Fell took the book and sighed. “Oh dear.”

Emma, suddenly realizing she had to leave if she was going to get to work on time, rose to quietly slip out the door—but her movement drew Mr. Fell’s gaze.

“My dear,” he said, suddenly sounding inspired, “do you think your aunt would like this book?”

“Um,” Emma said. In fact, her aunt would probably love it, although she couldn’t really remember mentioning her aunt to Mr. Fell.

“Come along; I’ll wrap it up for you,” he said, walking her to the front counter, where it occurred to her for the first time that Mr. Fell didn’t have anything remotely resembling a credit card scanner.

“I don’t have any cash,” she started, “but I could…pay for it later?”

“Certainly not,” Mr. Fell said firmly. “I wouldn’t dream of it. After all, I got it for free. And I’d never be able to sell it; it would just be taking up space. And if it makes your aunt happy—well! It’s a win-win!” He said “win-win” like he was proud of knowing a term that modern. He handed her the book, now wrapped in brown paper, and patted her hand with his hand that had the elegant pinky ring. “You haven’t given up on her yet,” he said encouragingly. Emma swallowed. Was she _that _obvious? “That’s very good of you.”

“_I _think you should stop worrying about pleasing _her_.” Mr. Crowley appeared on her left, draping himself across the counter. She hadn’t talked to him about her aunt either. “Focus on pleasing yourself.”

Mr. Fell, his eyes giving a long-suffering sideways flick toward him, pressed his lips together but said nothing. Emma could not feel the 6000 years of arguments that were suddenly crammed into the small bookshop, but only needed ordinary human perceptiveness to be confident that they were talking about something other than her aunt. She looked back and forth between the two of them, receiving the usual kind smile from Mr. Fell and a vaguely unsettling one from Mr. Crowley, and felt it wise to leave.

(Though it is not especially relevant to the story, the reader may be interested to know that Emma’s aunt was, indeed, happy about the book. Emma told her she’d gotten it from a church that was giving away some of its old inventory, which, strictly speaking, wasn’t a lie, and had the benefit of avoiding a number of topics on the rather extensive list of things her aunt disapproved of, which included Soho, Emma being anywhere near Soho, free time, men who were married to other men, men who gave gifts, men, and Emma being anywhere near men.)

As the spring and then summer months rolled on by, Emma began to feel a sense of increasing tension in the bookshop. This was not, of course, due to any sense of the way the bookshop was full to the brim with eleven years of planning and mutual thwarting (or 6000 years of this, depending on how you counted), ever-simmering and now steadily approaching their boiling point, since Emma did not have a sense with which to note this. It _was _due to Emma’s own nineteen years of safely navigating interactions with her various difficult relatives. Her ordinary human senses were highly attuned to danger signals. Mr. Fell still pottered around the shop, still tried to shoo away potential customers. Mr. Crowley still turned up at unpredictable times, still perched on furniture, still goaded Mr. Fell (for instance, he always made sure to replenish the stack of paperback romances when he was in full view of Mr. Fell, who tutted loudly). Both of them still gazed at the other when the other wasn’t looking; they still disappeared together for dates. Mr. Crowley still found excuses to do small favors for Mr. Fell and then lost track of time and words and his arms when Mr. Fell glowed with gratitude.

But something was brewing.

When she slipped in one summer morning to hear what sounded like a full-blown argument from the back of the store, she thought, with her heart sinking, that things must have come to a head.

“It was in the table,” groaned Mr. Crowley.

“It was not,” Mr. Fell snapped.

“It absolutely was in—I literally saw you reach into the table!”

“You saw no such thing.”

Rounding the corner, Emma first registered that Mr. Fell was wearing a black coat instead of his usual cream-colored one, which felt like the ground shaking under her feet (and though the ground _was _indeed due to shake in a few more days’ time, she did not, of course, know that; and also it would not—presumably—be due to Aziraphale’s coat color). Mr. Crowley was sprawled aggressively across a couch. The table in question was in front of Mr. Fell, with a top hat sitting on it; he was still holding a rabbit as if he’d just pulled it out of the hat (a plush rabbit, not a live one; that was for later).

“You do magic tricks?” Emma blurted. She would never have suspected Mr. Fell of concealing hidden talents, but if she had, secretly being a magician would not have been anywhere on the list.

Both men blinked at her in a way that gave her a distinct sense that she’d intruded on something private.

“Forgot to lock the door, did you?” Mr. Crowley directed snidely at Mr. Fell.

“Hello, my dear,” said Mr. Fell to Emma. “It’s lovely to see you.”

Emma did her best to ignore Mr. Crowley mimicking _It’s lovely to see you _from his position on the couch. “Are you…practicing for a show?” she asked, still wrestling with the improbability of Mr. Fell as an illusionist.

“More like the end of the world,” muttered Mr. Crowley, his head flopping even farther off the end of the couch.

Mr. Fell ignored him and gave Emma a determined smile. “Our godson is turning eleven. I’m entertaining at his birthday party.” A birthday party full of eleven-year-olds did sound a bit like the end of the world to Emma, who was entirely unaware of the memories of a nanny and a gardener flowing through the room, mingled with a growing current of panic over an unseen but approaching hellhound.

“I just need to get a little more practice in,” Mr. Fell continued—“Oh!” His eyes and mouth rounded into perfect O’s. “That’s exactly what I need—an audience! Someone to…to be encouraging, and ask questions at the right time.” (The memory of a nearly-empty Globe Theatre and a cheery voice—_“Buck up, Hamlet!”_—hovered well outside of Emma’s perception.)

“No, no, no, no,” moaned Mr. Crowley, “nobody else needs to see this.”

“Do shut up, Crowley,” Mr. Fell sighed, and turned to Emma. “Would you mind terribly, my dear?” There was a hint of pleading in his smile. “A young person to play the role of the audience would be just the thing.”

“Argh—she’s—she’s an _adult_,” spluttered Mr. Crowley. “That’s not the same at all!”

“Of course not,” Mr. Fell replied. “Obviously eleven-year-olds will be much easier to impress.”

“Oh no; they’ll be much worse,” Emma and Mr. Crowley both replied immediately.

Mr. Fell looked between the two of them, his face crumpling slightly.

“But I’m fine with being an audience!” Emma said quickly. “Um…I’ll just sit…” she looked around for a chair.

“On the floor there will do nicely,” Mr. Fell said, his sunniness restored. “Very realistic. Thank you, my dear. Ohh my, what have we here?” he added after she’d awkwardly sat, cross-legged on the dusty floor. He waved his hand in the general vicinity of her ear, holding a coin. “A three-penny piece!” He smiled winningly. Mr. Crowley made inarticulate noises behind him, his arms hanging bonelessly off the couch.

“Um,” Emma managed. “That was very…convincing.”

“Thank you, my dear,” he smiled, with a pointed glare at Mr. Crowley. Next, he had her pick a card and memorize it; he set the deck on the table while he whirled his hands extravagantly and attempted to pull a stuffed bird from a handkerchief (it got stuck in his jacket sleeve; the deck of cards was knocked to the floor somewhere in the process of extracting the bird.)

Some minutes later, after a good deal of fussily scooping up cards and a great deal more extravagant hand-whirling:

“Was that your card, dear?” Mr. Fell was tremulously hopeful.

Emma looked at the card, which was not only not hers but was also from an entirely different deck. She opened her mouth—

“Don’t lie,” growled Mr. Crowley, then made a disgusted face. “Gahhhh, I can’t believe I just told someone _not _to lie.”

Mr. Fell frowned at him, then at the card in Emma’s hand. “Well. Ah.” He drew up his shoulders. “I’m sure it will be fine with a bit more practice.” He summoned his inordinately warm smile and turned it on Emma. “Thank you, my dear. You’ve been most kind.” 

The following week was…odd, and also hard to remember later. The weather was very strange, and the bookshop was closed much of the time—well, even more so than usual. Some of the parts Emma did remember were clearly dreams—two well-dressed men in the bookshop shouting about pornography, for example, and then the shop itself burning down—that part was definitely a dream, because the shop was still there, its usual self, the next day. Not open, but that wasn’t surprising. She spotted Mr. Fell leaving, looking somehow not as soft as usual, and wondered if he was meeting Mr. Crowley somewhere.

And then…


	2. After the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mr. Fell?” she asked. “Is your husband around today?”  
Mr. Fell had his back to her, and turned around slowly.  
“My…husband?” It was the same frightened tone, entirely unbeknownst to Emma, with which he had echoed “Go off…together?” some weeks before.  
“Mr. Crowley?” Emma prompted, feeling that it shouldn’t be necessary.  
“Oh!” Mr. Fell swallowed. “He’s not my husband. We’re—we’re not married.”  
This produced a similar unsteady-ground feeling to seeing Mr. Fell wearing black. It had never occurred to Emma that Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley might not be married.

…And then, everything returned to normal.

Sort of.

Or, in fact, not at all.

After a few days of being almost entirely closed, the bookshop returned to its usual (that is, highly irregular) schedule. But there were differences. The stack of battered paperback romances, for example, that had frequently changed locations but had never run low, was replaced by an equally battered stack of paperback children’s mysteries, as if an authoritative child instead of Mr. Crowley had suddenly taken over her entertainment choices. Emma had read them herself when she was eleven or twelve. They were still enjoyable, she concluded, but they were much shorter than the romances.

At first, she was in little danger of becoming bored, because Mr. Crowley was now in the bookshop much more frequently (Emma wondered, with accidental accuracy, if he’d been fired from his job). For a few weeks, he seemed determined not to let Mr. Fell out of his sight. Even when he wasn’t out in the shop surreptitiously watching him, Emma was fairly sure he was lurking in the back room. They disappeared together for lunch dates more frequently than before as well. In fact, nearly the only days they didn’t go out together were those when Mr. Crowley would barge in with a sack, calling, “Angel, I brought takeout!” (Mr. Fell would gleam excitedly and Mr. Crowley would pretend he wasn’t basking in the glow.)

Another difference: At some point in those few weeks, she spotted Mr. Crowley bringing in a (very healthy-looking) houseplant, which was nearly as startling to Emma as walking in on Mr. Fell attempting magic. After that, more plants began appearing, their excessively glossy green leaves looking very out of place in the dusty shop. Mr. Crowley hissed fiercely at them in a way that made Emma (and the plants) shiver. Mr. Fell, on the other hand, whispered encouragement whenever Mr. Crowley wasn’t around: “Don’t you listen to him. You listen to me.” (The images of a nanny and a gardener giving competing advice to a small child who wasn’t the Antichrist probably wouldn’t have made any sense to Emma even if she could have perceived them.)

Emma kept hoping that Mr. Crowley would re-stock the stack of paperback romances, but he had evidently forgotten about them. One day, when she’d finished the children’s mystery series twice, she concluded that she would have to take matters into her own hands.

“Mr. Fell?” she asked. “Is your husband around today?”

Mr. Fell had his back to her, and turned around slowly.

“My…husband?” It was the same frightened tone, entirely unbeknownst to Emma, with which he had echoed _“Go off…together?” _some weeks before.

“Mr. Crowley?” Emma prompted, feeling that it shouldn’t be necessary.

“Oh!” Mr. Fell swallowed. “He’s not my husband. We’re—we’re not married.”

This produced a similar unsteady-ground feeling to seeing Mr. Fell wearing black. It had never occurred to Emma that Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley might not be married. “Boyfriend? Partner?” Maybe they had just never made it official.

“N-no,” Mr. Fell said, laughing nervously. His eyes flicked to the back room door. “We’re not—we don’t have—ah—that kind of relationship.”

Emma gaped at him. “What…what kind of relationship do you have?” A small voice in the back of her mind told her that she was being rudely personal, but she was too stunned to pay much attention.

He wrung his hands. “We’re…friends.” He said it as if he were afraid of touching even that mild of a word. On a metaphysical plane well beyond Emma’s perception, memories were pouring in:

_“We’re not friends! I don’t even like you!”_

_“Fraternizing?”_

_“I don’t need you!”_

_“The feeling is mutual! Obviously!”_

_“It’s over!”_

_“Oh, we’re not friends. We don’t even know each other. We just met.”_

_“There is no ‘our side!’”_

_“We’re hereditary enemies.”_

_“I won’t even think about you!”_

“Friends,” Mr. Fell said more firmly, as if banishing these images, and then, proudly, warmly: “Best friends, in fact.”

The memories (that Emma couldn’t see) were now different:

_“How long have we been friends? Six thousand years!”_

_“It would take a real miracle for my friend and I to survive it.”_

_“Temptation accomplished.”_

_“Just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.”_

“Best friends,” Emma repeated slowly. “Nothing more…intimate than that?”

Mr. Fell froze for a few seconds, perhaps distracted by the memory of a wall at his back, Crowley’s lips inches from his, and only the word “nice” between them—“N-no,” he stammered. “Of—of course not.” Again the nervous chuckle.

Emma folded her arms. “I don’t believe you.” Then, a sudden possibility occurring to her: “Wait, you don’t think I’m homophobic, do you?”

“What?” Mr. Fell replied blankly. “No, of course not, my dear.”

“Because you don’t have to pretend…I mean, not around me. And I wouldn’t out you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Out me?” Mr. Fell still looked lost.

“As…being…gay?” Emma explained slowly. Just how many decades behind _was _Mr. Fell?

“Oh!” Comprehension had dawned. “I see what you mean. No, no, my dear, of course you wouldn’t do such a thing. Although, strictly speaking, I’m not sure I fit the definition.” (Emma stared again. She’d never thought much about trees full of monkeys, and she didn’t know nitrous oxide by that name, but some equivalent phrase was certainly in her mind.) “In any case, Mr. Crowley and I aren’t pretending anything. We are friends—very good friends—but we’re not”—he pressed his lips together—“romantically involved.”

“He calls you angel,” Emma protested. “You don’t call someone angel if you’re just friends.”

“He calls me angel because I—oh, dear, never mind. Besides, my dear”—his tone became more pedantic—“you shouldn’t say ‘just friends’ as if it’s a bad thing. Friendship should be…treasured. Believe me, in our case, it’s an achievement. Our families are…difficult. His is…well. Evil is actually not an overstatement. And mine is very…rigid.”

“Oh,” said Emma understandingly, thinking of her aunt. “Are _they _homophobic?”

“Oh, dear, no—that’s a common misconception, actually—humans—er, people…that is, some people—tend to think…oh, never mind.” He sighed. “I suppose you could simply say that our families don’t get along with each other. At all.” He frowned, momentarily confused. The images Emma had no awareness of might have included an angel pouring holy water in Hell, a demon bringing hellfire to Heaven, Beelzebub and Gabriel conferring on an airfield. “At least not in public. Crowley and I—we were forbidden to have _any _contact—well, any friendly contact.”

“Oh!” Emma exclaimed. “You’re like Romeo and Juliet!” (As mentioned some time ago, in addition to impulsivity, she had a romantic imagination.)

“Certainly not!” Mr. Fell looked horrified. “He only likes the funny ones.”

“Um…sure,” Emma said. The image of a grumbling Crowley ambling out of the Globe was unhelpfully invisible to her. “Okay,” she regrouped, “but you said you _were _forbidden—are they…alright with it now?”

“Ah, well, not exactly. It’s more that we’ve…cut ourselves off from them.”

More memories hidden from Emma:

_“Shut your stupid mouth and die already.”_

_“All the other words I have for you are worse.”_

_An angel breathing hellfire._

_A demon splashing holy water._

“So,” Emma said slowly, “you can be friends now? I mean, in the open?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fell, with a truly pleased smile, “and I must say, it is simply lovely.”

“Okay”—Emma would have been dancing in frustration if she’d been a bit younger—“but you’re obviously in love!”

“My dear, I don’t know what you mean,” he replied, thoroughly unconvincingly.

“You go on dates. All the time. You went to lunch _yesterday_.”

“Well, yes—no! Those aren’t _dates_. We dine together. As friends do.”

“Friends don’t eat together _every day_, Mr. Fell,” Emma explained. “Friends don’t make reservations at the Ritz together.” She’d heard them discuss the Ritz just last week.

“D-don’t they?” Mr. Fell asked nervously.

“No,” Emma said firmly. “How long have you two been…dining together, anyway?”

Mr. Fell took a deep breath. The room might have been overwhelmed with pile upon pile of memories—oysters in Rome, crepes in France, more than a few meals at the Ritz, countless little restaurants where they know you—“Rather a long time, I suppose,” he summarized. “I enjoy his company, of course. And—and I like to think the feeling is mutual.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Nobody looks at someone the way you look at him just because they enjoy their company.”

Mr. Fell’s eyes were wide in his expressive face. “How—how do I look at him, exactly?”

“He handed you a book the other day, and you smiled at him like...like the sun coming out.”

She didn’t know why he suddenly fell silent, since she couldn’t see the memory of a ruined church, a case of books, and an angel, frozen, realization crashing down far more powerfully than the bomb that had failed to touch them—

Mr. Fell laced his hands together, swallowed. “It…it doesn’t matter that I—how I feel.” She could have sworn his lower lip trembled. “However _I _may feel, _he’s _not…that’s not the sort of thing he would feel. Or want.”

“Mr. Fell!” Emma said, exasperated but remembering just in time to keep her voice down. If Mr. Crowley _was _in the back room, he’d be out here instantly if he thought someone was antagonizing Mr. Fell. “You’re really smart. How can someone as clever as you”—she had no idea why this caused him to flinch—“have not noticed this?”

Mr. Fell’s eyes flitted everywhere, although especially to the back room door. “What…precisely…have I not noticed?”

“Well,” Emma floundered, feeling as if she’d been asked to explain water to a maddeningly naïve, round-eyed fish, “to start with, there’s all the nice things he does for you—”

“Don’t let him hear you call him ‘nice,’” Mr. Fell interjected, alarmed. His eyes darted again to the closed door.

“But he _is_,” she argued. “To you. He does little things for you all the time. He finds _excuses _to do nice things for you.”—(_A play suddenly made successful, paint gently blown from a coat, a ride offered to a young woman and her bicycle_)—“And then when you thank him, and do the glowing smile thing, he”—she almost said “freezes up,” but recalled that she’d never seen Mr. Fell use an electronic device more advanced than a rotary phone—“melts.”

“He’s…not accustomed to gratitude,” Mr. Fell said, waving soft hands uncertainly. “It’s only reasonable that it would affect him strongly.”

“He doesn’t spend _all _his time here so he can see _gratitude_. He comes here to see _you_. He barely lets you out of his sight.”

“He’s very…protective,” Mr. Fell continued to try to explain away, albeit weakly. “That’s certainly true.” Outside Emma’s awareness were centuries of the demon circling the angel, hidden eyes scanning for danger.

“That’s _not _what I’m talking about.”

“Well, then, my dear”—Mr. Fell made an attempt to appear annoyed and impatient, but failed to hide the note of faint, nervous hope in his voice—“what _are _you talking about?”

“He can’t keep his eyes off you,” Emma said. “How do you not see it? And the _way _he looks at you.”

Mr. Fell was beyond nervous laughter now. “The way he looks at me?” he asked, in barely hidden desperation. “What…what way do you mean?”

Emma, contrary to her usual habits, paused a few seconds to think of how to phrase this. “Like…like you’re the best thing in the world.” She shook her head. Even that wasn’t strong enough. “Like you _are _the world.”

And she didn’t know why he stared at her, his mouth open in its perfect O, his busy hands still for once. She, after all, couldn’t see the image of a toast at the Ritz on the first day after the end of the world.

After some time, Mr. Fell closed his mouth and automatically adjusted his posture.

“You’ve thought we were married…all this time?” he asked Emma.

She breathed in and out with forced patience. “You’re the most married people I’ve ever met.”

He gave her one more frightened look, then turned toward the back room door, straightening his bow tie (which didn’t need it).

“Crowley?” he called.

Mr. Crowley was there in an instant (as he had been for centuries, as the images unseen by Emma pointed out: _“You’re lucky I was in the area” and “Sorry—consecrated ground” and “Hey, Aziraphale. I see you found a ride.”_) There was nothing to drape himself across, so he stretched up a lanky arm to hold the doorframe. “What is it, angel?”

Mr. Fell didn’t look at him, and his voice was tiny, as he asked, “Are we going to get married?”

Mr. Crowley snatched off his sunglasses with the hand not holding the doorframe. “Are we _what_?”—with a flash of golden eyes and an incredulous, delighted smile that Emma had no way of knowing echoed all the way back to Eden.

Mr. Fell looked away, then back, then—more loudly and fretfully: “Are we going to get married?”

Mr. Crowley stared for a moment, one hand still on the doorframe, and it occurred to Emma that she was no longer sure which part of his body was holding him up.

“Are you proposing, angel?” he asked in a joyous drawl that, if Emma been able to hear it, would have sounded like “_Moral argument_?” after a gleaming thank you for a stain removed.

“Well,” said Mr. Fell, wriggling his shoulders uncomfortably, then setting his plump chin firmly, “well—yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”

Emma couldn’t feel 6000 years worth of memories thickly flooding the room in the excruciating seconds that stretched out, only saw Mr. Crowley very, very still before saying, softly, reverently, “Any time you want.”

(Another memory floated through, like a wound being healed—an improbable car lit with neon, a tartan thermos between them, a lift refused.)

Mr. Fell gave a tiny nod. “Yes. Quite. Tomorrow, then?”

“Ngk,” said Mr. Crowley. Emma was reminded of the last time her mobile froze before he managed to produce coherent words again: “Ssorry—did you ssay _tomorrow_?”

Mr. Fell twisted his hands together, though his voice was gentle: “Do I go too fast for you, Crowley?”

Mr. Crowley’s mouth opened and closed several times, like a fish. “No,” he said finally, “no, not at all”—though Emma was sure that his legs were no longer capable of holding him up—“I just, I just always thought that you—you’d want more of a ceremony, preparation, do the thing properly—” He ran out of words like a car skidding to a stop on gravel.

“You’ve…you’ve thought about it?” Mr. Fell’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Well, of course I’ve—” Mr. Crowley spluttered—“angel, what do you think I’ve…Alpha Centauri, and, and…”

_(And “We can run away together” and “You can stay at my place, if you like,” and “Anywhere you like” and “Wherever you are, I’ll come to you”…)_

“Oh,” said Mr. Fell faintly. Then: “My dear, did you think I didn’t want to?”

“W—nnngh—aghnngh,” Mr. Crowley said eloquently, flinging his arms around.

“_Crow_ley,” Mr. Fell said despairingly. “We _couldn’t_. They would have destroyed you.”

_(“My side doesn’t send rude notes” and “They won’t just be angry; they’ll destroy you” and “It will destroy you completely” and “I can’t have you risking your life”…)_

“But,” Mr. Crowley finally managed to produce recognizable words again, “we’re done with them now. My side _and _yours.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fell, then again as if to solidify it further, “yes, we are.” (_“We’re on our own side now,” _declared a memory Emma didn’t perceive). He wriggled his shoulders into a prouder, firmer line. “But if tomorrow’s too soon, my dear,” he added, “that’s perfectly fine.”

“Tomorrow’s fine. Tomorrow’s excellent. Tomorrow’s amazing. Can’t get here soon enough. Could go today, if you like. Ah—where—where do you want to…go…do the…?”

“Um,” said Emma, “you can’t just—”

Both men’s heads turned so sharply toward her that she actually took a step back.

Mr. Fell looked as though he had to remind himself who she was. “What was that, my dear?”

“Um,” Emma said again, fighting an instinct to get _very far away, now, _from Mr. Crowley, “there’s—you…register, and then you have to wait, and do the, um, actual ceremony—”

“I’ve looked into it,” Mr. Crowley said brusquely.

Mr. Fell sent him another startled glance. “Well then,” he said, folding his hands neatly, “we’ll go and do the…registering…tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Emma, “I’ll…just…go, then.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” said Mr. Crowley with a truly terrifying smile. (The memory Emma couldn’t perceive was of a demon recommending _“I think you should get on with the play.”_) Her nerve broke, and she bolted for the door.

The next day, the bookshop was closed when Emma passed by, not that that was unusual. She did wonder if she had dreamed about giving relationship advice to two men at least twice her age (with no idea of how wildly understated that last part was). But the day after that, it was open again.

And then…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry; the last chapter is coming soon!


End file.
